Houston Yacht Club
La Porte, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Houston Yacht Club was organized in 1897 by a group of prominent citizens. Members met in the Binz Building in downtown Houston and were led by the first Commodore, Dan E. Kennedy. After Kennedy's death in 1904, the boatmen reorganized as the Houston Yacht and Power Boat Club, receiving a charter from the State of Texas in 1905. Financial difficulties forced the group to reorganize, and the Houston Launch Club was formed in 1906. A clubhouse designed by architect R. D. Steele, was completed on Buffalo Bayou in 1910. The members moved to a new Spanish mission clubhouse designed by architect Wyatt Hedrick in 1927, and retained the Houston Yacht Club name. The club began hosting regattas in the early 1900s and has hosted local, regional, national and world championships. Members have raced in all levels of competition, including the Olympics. Although primarily a private boating club, the organization has supported community activities and was active in the development of the ship channel. During time of war, members have offered their crafts for service, and have helped patrol the ship channel, bay and Gulf. The clubhouse has served as a refuge for area residents during natural disasters. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1897 by prominent Houstonians meeting downtown in the Binz Building, the Houston Yacht Club weathered reorganizations and financial troubles before settling into a Spanish mission clubhouse on Galveston Bay in 1927. From its earliest regattas the club sent members racing at every level, including the Olympics. In wartime its members lent their boats to patrol the ship channel and bay, and its clubhouse sheltered residents during natural disasters.
Why it matters
The club reflects the rise of Houston's Gulf Coast leisure and maritime culture, and how a private organization repeatedly turned its resources toward wartime service and community refuge.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Dan E. Kennedy
- · R. D. Steele
- · Wyatt Hedrick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
La Porte
La Porte, TX
A group of Colorado land developers formed the La Porte Land and Town Company in 1890, bought over a thousand acres, and began selling lots to settlers lured from New York and the Midwest. A railroad reached the Sylvan Beach Resort in 1899, and the beach joined agriculture as the town's economic mainstay. Storms in 1900 and 1915, a nearby oil strike in 1916, and post–World War II industrialization steadily reshaped La Porte from a farming and resort town into part of the greater Houston industrial coast.
New Washington
Morgan's Point, TX
At the junction of Buffalo Bayou and San Jacinto Bay, Philadelphia-born Colonel James Morgan bought 1,600 acres in 1835 and laid out New Washington, working as merchant, land agent, and civic leader. Mexican troops burned the town during the Texas Revolution while Morgan served as a colonel, but it was rebuilt and flourished until nearby Houston outgrew it. Morgan's 1850s dream of a navigable channel along Buffalo Bayou was realized in 1876 when steamship magnate Charles Morgan dredged the Houston Ship Channel; the town, now Morgan's Point, was incorporated in 1949.
Site of Clifton-by-the-Sea
Bacliff, TX
Established in 1910 by landowners G. C. Perkins and W. Y. Fuqua, Clifton-by-the-Sea was a bayside resort that rose as prosperity returned to Galveston County after the catastrophic 1900 storm. Reached by the rail line along Galveston Bay's western shore, it offered a hotel, summer homes, and a pier-mounted bathhouse and pavilion that hosted dances with Houston and Galveston orchestras. Hurricanes repeatedly wrecked the resort until a 1943 storm ended it for good; after World War II the area became home to petrochemical workers and, in 1948, took the name Bacliff.
City of Baytown
Baytown, TX
Set among eight bays on the Gulf Coast, the land that became Baytown was home to the Attakapa, Akokisa, Bidai, and Karankawa peoples before Anglo pioneers gathered near Lynch's Ferry in 1822. Rice farms and clay brickyards built up the area through the 1800s, and the discovery of the Goose Creek Oilfield in 1903 — remembered as one of the nation's first offshore drilling ventures — triggered an oil boom that fused the towns of Goose Creek, Pelly, and Bay Town into a single city at consolidation in 1948.